‘General Parkinson?’ Barrington suggested.
‘General Parkinson is currently in the operating theatre, having something unspeakable done to his haemorrhoids.’
‘General Hatton?’
‘General Hatton is the one who secured the privileges for Sergeant Paniatowski in the first place. He did it to oblige a pal of his in the RAF, and he will not take kindly to any suggestion from us that he should let that pal down.’
‘So what can we do?’
‘Tomorrow morning, General Doyle will appear at his desk in the War Office – no doubt limping slightly – and I will immediately ask him to do what is necessary.’
‘But if this Paniatowski woman’s as good as you say …’
‘She’s very good,’ Forsyth said. ‘But even someone as talented as Monika couldn’t possibly blow the whole thing open in just a few short hours.’
Twenty-Six
The Chief Constable had all the morning papers spread out on the desk in front of him. The headlines told their own story:
‘Whitebridge Hangman’ Dead
High Speed Car Chase Sees End of Northern Killer
Lancashire Monster Dies
Marlowe picked up one of the papers, scanned the story, then threw it back on the desk in obvious disgust.
‘Well, you haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory with this case, have you, Chief Inspector?’ he asked.
‘At least the killer’s been caught before he could do any more harm,’ Woodend pointed out mildly.
‘By the Yorkshire Police,’ Marlowe countered. ‘He committed two of his murders in Lancashire, and got away with them, but the moment he tries the same thing across the border, he’s caught.’
Woodend could have pointed out that the killer had taken far more chances with his third murder than he had with the previous two – that there was a big difference between killing his victim near a lonely canal bank and killing him in front of several thousand people – but he knew he would only be wasting his breath.
‘I’ll be nothing but a laughing stock at the next meeting of the Association of Chief Police Officers,’ Marlowe complained. He sighed heavily. ‘Still, I suppose I must do what I can to save you from the vultures waiting out there for their press briefing.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Woodend replied. ‘It’s very kind of you. An’ despite what anybody else might say, I know you’re not only doin’ it because you can’t save yourself without savin’ me first.’
‘That remark is bordering on the insolent, Mr Woodend,’ Marlowe said angrily.
‘Is it, sir?’ Woodend asked innocently. ‘And there was me thinkin’ I was only bein’ nice.’
Henry Marlowe tried to think of a suitably cutting comeback, and failed completely.
‘How much longer do you intend to allow Sergeant Paniatowski to swan about in the sun, at the taxpayers’ expense?’ he demanded, shifting his ground for a fresh attack.
‘I’ll tell her to come straight home as soon as I get the chance to speak to her.’
‘And why haven’t you spoken to her already, pray tell?’
‘Because I don’t know exactly where she is. I rang Akrotiri, an’ they told me she’d left the base.’
‘It’s typical of you to lose track of your own people,’ Marlowe said contemptuously. ‘Shall we get this press briefing over with?’
Woodend shrugged. ‘I suppose we might as well.’
The press room was crowded with reporters, but Marlowe kept his eyes on Williams, who he had now firmly identified as Enemy Number One.
The Chief Constable cleared his throat. ‘Previous to the dramatic events of last evening, our own investigation here in Whitebridge had already uncovered much of the information that I am now about to give you,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘The killer’s name was George Niko … Niko …
‘Nikopolidis,’ Woodend supplied.
‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ Marlowe said, flashing him a quick and venomous glare. ‘The man was a Greek Cypriot, and is believed to have been heavily involved in the EOKA terrorist campaign which was waged on that unhappy island some years ago. We have learned that he lived quite openly on Cyprus since its independence, and only came to England a few days ago. We consider it highly probable that these three recent murders were only the latest in a long line of killings, and you can all thank your lucky stars that the Lancashire Police were more on the ball when it came to apprehending him than those investigating his previous crimes seem to have been.’
‘But you didn’t apprehend him, did you?’ Williams interrupted. ‘He crashed his van and killed himself.’
‘That is undoubtedly true,’ the Chief Constable agreed, ‘but had he not been involved in that fatal accident, we would certainly have arrested him within the next few hours.’
‘And Tom Bygraves would still have been dead,’ Williams pointed out. ‘Isn’t this simply a case of, “The operation was successful, but the patient died”?’
‘It is always so very easy for you gentlemen of the press to take a negative view of the way things develop, but we working bobbies prefer to be more constructive,’ Marlowe said, a little shakily.
‘And another thing,’ Williams pressed on. ‘Why did this Nikopolidis want to kill these three sons of Whitebridge?’
Marlowe sighed. ‘I thought I had already explained to you that the man was a natural killer, and that he once worked for EOKA. His three victims had all served Her Majesty’s Government proudly – and no doubt bravely – in Cyprus, and it was probably the case that, in his sick mind, he thought he was exacting his revenge on the whole British Army.’
‘I can see that,’ Williams conceded.
‘Good. I am pleased you finally seem to have caught up with the rest of us,’ Marlowe told him.
‘But what I don’t see is why he chose these three particular men. Of the thousands of soldiers who served in Cyprus, what was it about them that made them so special to him?’
Marlowe looked to Woodend for help.
‘We don’t know,’ the Chief Inspector admitted.
‘What Mr Woodend means is that no one can ever know,’ the Chief Constable said hastily. ‘Niko … this Greek … was clearly a madman. There is no logic to his choice of victims, except perhaps a twisted logic in his own diseased brain.’
‘He had no trouble at all in finding these victims of his, though, did he?’ Williams asked.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If I was a Greek Cypriot, living on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, I don’t think I’d have any idea of how to locate three soldiers who hadn’t been on the island themselves for over seven years.’
‘But then you do not think at all as he did, because you are not a homicidal maniac,’ Marlowe said. He permitted himself a small smile. ‘At least, Mr Williams, I sincerely hope you’re not.’
The Cypriot Chief Inspector’s name was Andreas Karamanlis. He looked a little like Anthony Quinn had, when playing the Greek patriot in The Guns of Navarone, and Paniatowski wondered if he’d seen the film – and if he had, whether that was the moment when he had decided it would be a good idea to grow a thick moustache and smoke a curved pipe.
Karamanlis’ office had the same cluttered appearance as her own boss’s, though, living in Lancashire as he did, Woodend would have had no use for the ancient but powerful fan which was clattering away noisily in the corner of the room.
‘I must tell you, Sergeant, it is a real pleasure to speak to a British copper again,’ Karamanlis said.
‘In Lancashire, sir, we prefer to call ourselves bobbies,’ Paniatowski told him, with a smile.
Karamanlis returned the smile. ‘Of course you do,’ he agreed. ‘I should have known that, because the UKPU was drawn from forces all over your country, and there were both coppers and bobbies.’
‘What’s the UKPU?’
‘It is, or rather, it was, the United Kingdom Police Unit. I take it you have never heard of it.’
‘The
initials didn’t mean anything to me,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘but now you’ve given me its full name, it does ring a bell – if only a very vague one.’
‘Then perhaps I should fill you in on a few details,’ Karamanlis said. ‘Is that the correct term – fill you in on a few details?’
‘It’s perfect.’
Karamanlis lit up his pipe, and puffed away for a few seconds.
‘Until 1955, the Cyprus Police was run on British lines – we were a colony of yours, after all – though it was made up entirely of Cypriots,’ he said. ‘But when conditions here started to deteriorate, the Governor decided the CP was simply not equipped to deal with the situation. Policemen were identified with the colonial power, you see, and so were not always popular with the civilian population. Besides, it was claimed that the police had been infiltrated by EOKA.’
‘And had it?’
Karamanlis shrugged. ‘I suppose there was a certain justification, in some cases, for the belief. At any rate, a decision was made to bring in British policemen to supplement the work of the local force. They were all volunteers who came out here to serve for twenty-one months, and they were all promoted by one rank, so that constables became sergeants, and sergeants became inspectors.’
‘How many of them were there?’
‘There were a hundred and fifty of them initially, though their number eventually rose to over two hundred and fifty.’ Karamanlis chuckled. ‘At first, I think, some of them saw it as no more than a very long holiday.’
‘But it wasn’t?’
‘Not at all. They were, in fact, putting themselves into a very dangerous situation. They carried weapons for their own protection, which they would not have done in your own country, and, in addition, they were escorted everywhere by armed soldiers. But even so, in the three years they were here, seven of them were murdered, and eleven seriously wounded.’ The Chief Inspector puffed on his pipe again. ‘But you are not here to listen to me talk about what is now no more than ancient history, are you, Sergeant Paniatowski?’
‘In a way, I am,’ Monika Paniatowski countered. ‘I’d be very interested to learn about any serious crimes which might have been committed on the ninth of June, 1958.’
‘You are being very specific,’ Karamanlis said.
‘Yes,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘I am.’
The Chief Inspector swung his chair round, opened his filing cabinet, and pulled out a battered cardboard file. He flicked through the pages until he came to the right one, consulted it for a moment, then said, ‘Any serious crime?’
‘Any serious crime,’ Paniatowski agreed.
Karamanlis frowned. ‘There were two on that date – though since one of them involved the British Army and EOKA, it might be more accurately called an “act of war” from one side of the fence, and an “act of terror” from the other.’
‘And what would you call it?’ Paniatowski wondered.
‘That would depend on whether I was thinking as a policeman or as a patriot,’ Karamanlis replied enigmatically. ‘At any rate, the act of war/act of terror occurred in the afternoon of that day. A British Army patrol was ambushed, and the corporal leading it was killed.’
‘That would be Corporal Matthews,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Yes, but how would you …?’
‘What about the second crime?’
‘That same night, a young girl disappeared from the village in which the ambush had taken place. She has not been seen since, so she is presumed dead.’
‘Could you give me any more details about that incident?’
‘She was a very lively young woman, by all accounts. She was very interested in astronomy – which is unusual for Cypriot girls – and that night she had gone out to look at the stars. She never returned home.’
‘You gave me all that information without looking down at your file once,’ Paniatowski said.
Karamanlis smiled wistfully.
‘You suspect that I have a personal involvement in the case, and you are right,’ he said. ‘I was, indeed, part of the team which investigated the poor girl’s disappearance. My boss at the time, Chief Inspector Harding, was very angry about the case – almost unprofessionally so. But we understood the reasons for his anger – we knew that he had two young daughters of his own and we were very much in sympathy with him.’
‘So he pulled out all the stops, did he?’
‘He most certainly did. He told us that even in troubled times like those were, the disappearance of a child was simply not to be tolerated. He cancelled all leave, and put every available man on the investigation.’
‘But you still didn’t find anything that might have helped explain what had happened to the girl?’
‘No,’ Karamanlis agreed. ‘But in our own defence, I must point out that we were only working on the investigation for a short time before we were pulled off it again.’
‘But I thought you said that your Chief Inspector Harding was keen as mustard to solve it.’
‘So he was. But the situation changed after he had spoken to your Special Branch and Military Intelligence.’
‘And what did they have to say, that cooled his enthusiasm?’
‘That a roving band of Turkish Cypriot vagrants – men of the worst possible class and kind – had been spotted near the village that very night, and that it was probably they who had taken – or murdered – the girl.’
‘And you accepted that?’
‘Why would we not have? The Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots were as much at each other’s throats then as they are now. Perhaps even more so. There had already been several inter-communal murders that very year. It seemed highly probable, given that the Turkish scum had been spotted in the area, that they were responsible.’
‘And no attempt was ever made to track this band of Turkish Cypriots down?’
‘None,’ Karamanlis admitted, looking a little ashamed. ‘But that was not our choice – it was a political decision that we drop the case.’
‘How did the disappearance of a young girl ever manage to become political?’ Paniatowski wondered.
‘It was not the disappearance that was political, it was the nature of the probable perpetrators.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
‘It was felt that once the men had returned to the Turkish area of the island, it would have been very difficult to identify them, and that even if we could identify them – and establish conclusively that they had been near the village – we would still find it impossible to prove that they had murdered the girl.’
‘Still, there would have been no harm in trying, would there?’ Paniatowski said.
‘That is where you are wrong,’ Karamanlis told her. ‘It was also felt – and I happen to agree with this – that by even attempting to make an unmakeable case, we would be running the risk of further inflaming the violence between the communities, and that, as a result, even more innocent people would die. And so the girl – the poor child – became simply another casualty of war.’
‘You’ve been very helpful, and I mustn’t take up much more of your time,’ Paniatowski said. ‘But before I go, I do have just one more question.’
‘Yes?’
‘About how far is it from the Akrotiri base to the village where the girl disappeared?’
Karamanlis thought about it. ‘Eighteen or nineteen miles, I would guess,’ he said.
And there had been forty miles on the clock of the stolen Land Rover, Paniatowski thought.
She shook hands with the Chief Inspector, and took her leave. When she stepped out onto the street, the bright sunlight almost blinded her for a few seconds. Then her eyes adjusted, and she looked around for Lance Corporal Bill Blaine and his Land Rover.
There was no sign of either the lance corporal or the vehicle, but two severe-looking military policemen were very much in evidence, and the moment they saw her, they began to walk towards her in a most determined manner.
Twenty-Seven
Co
nsidering the amount of alcohol they have consumed, they should have reached some kind of philosophical plateau by now, and be saying things like, ‘Well, if a bullet’s got your name on it, there’s nothing you can do about it.’
Failing that, they should at least have reached the stage at which it was possible to re-write the past, in order to turn events which had either been mundane or unpleasant into amusing anecdotes – ‘Remember that time Jack Matthews pretended he was going to shoot those three Cyps if they didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. I don’t know if they believed him, but I certainly bloody did, and I was near shitting myself.’
Neither of these states has been achieved. They have been drinking, but they are not drunk. They are speaking – occasionally – but they are not really saying anything. It is as if their nerves and feelings are coated in a layer of ice, and will remain coated until one of the unit has the nerve to start a fire.
It is Reg Lewis who strikes the tinder. ‘What if?’ he says. ‘What if your corporal was killed by a bunch of cowardly bastards in the hills? What would you do then?’
If they were still playing the game as a game, someone would come back with an immediate answer, but this is real, and there is a long pause before Tom Bygraves says, ‘What can we do?’
‘We can go back to the village,’ Mark Hough says, with a determination which takes all them – including himself – by surprise.
‘And do what?’ Terry Pugh asks.
‘We won’t know till we get there,’ Martin Murray says, grasping the existential moment.
And suddenly they are all agreed. They have no plan. They have no real expectations. But it seems the right thing to do.
The guards on the gate are only too well aware that these five men do not have permission to take the Land Rover out at this time of night. But they also know what the men have been through in the previous twelve hours, and so, instead of raising a hand or lowering the barrier, they choose to look the other way.
Dangerous Games Page 21